Justice Alito’s Ruling on Voting Rights Act Relied on Misleading Data, Report Finds

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito relied on misleading data to support his ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act, The Guardian reported on Friday.

In the court’s majority opinion, Alito asserted that racial discrimination in voting, which had justified the creation of the Voting Rights Act, no longer exists. He wrote:

“Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”

Alito’s claim cited a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by the Department of Justice, which used a statistical method experts consider suboptimal for measuring statewide voter turnout. The brief calculated Black and white voter turnout in Louisiana as a proportion of each racial group’s total population over age 18. This approach includes individuals ineligible to vote, such as noncitizens and people with felony convictions.

Experts typically measure voter turnout as a proportion of the citizen voting age population—the eligible population. Using this preferred methodology, The Guardian found that Black voter turnout in Louisiana only exceeded white turnout in the 2012 presidential election.

Alito also omitted that the racial voter turnout gap is widening. In the three most recent presidential elections since Barack Obama’s candidacy, Black voter turnout has lagged behind white turnout, according to The Guardian’s analysis. In Louisiana, the disparity grew between 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Expert Criticism of Alito’s Methodology

Kevin Morris, a researcher at the Brennan Center for Justice, called Alito’s claim “simply not factual” and noted that the turnout gap had “exploded” over the past three years.

Michael McDonald, a voter turnout expert at the University of Florida, told The Guardian that using the flawed methodology was likely intentional.

“If I wanted to manipulate the numbers in a way that was favorable to the government’s interest, I would be using voting age population,”

“They had to fudge how they’re calculating the turnout rate to get there, and they’re not even taking into account margin of error, and all these other methodology issues about the current population survey to arrive at that number. Someone knew what they were doing.”

Impact of the Supreme Court’s Ruling

The Supreme Court’s decision on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has emboldened Republican-led redistricting efforts nationwide. Many Democrat-led districts with majority-Black populations are now at risk of being redrawn.